In September 2014, a Chinese company that most Americans had never heard of held the largest IPO in history – bigger than Google, Facebook, and Twitter combined. Alibaba, now the world's largest e-commerce company, mostly escaped Western notice for over ten years, while building a customer base larger than Amazon's and handling the bulk of e-commerce transactions in China. How did it happen? And what was it like to be along for such a revolutionary ride?

The overflow of information generated during disasters can be as paralyzing to humanitarian response as the lack of information. Making sense of this information–Big Data–is proving an impossible challenge for traditional humanitarian organizations, which is precisely why they're turning to Digital Humanitarians.